by Ryan Schow
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t want to be alone.”
He thought back to what Quentin had said before he was killed. How he said Bailey would choose Nick and maybe at some point in time, he would need a woman. Marcus didn’t need anything. But he was tired of being alone. Tired of being angry.
Looking at Corrine, her auburn hair long, her eyes a greyish green, all her features soft and pleading, he asked, “How old are you?”
“Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen in two days.”
“Jesus Christ help me,” he muttered under his breath.
“I won’t be a burden, I promise.”
“You going to see me as your daddy figure? Ask me to take care of you?”
“You’re not that much older than me,” she said. “Any my dad was older. He just turned sixty. You aren’t sixty, are you?”
“You know I’m not.”
“Let me help you,” she said, gently. “I can help.”
“No.”
Tears started to well in her eyes and he couldn’t take it. He didn’t want to feel. Wasn’t ready for it.
“Go get a sweater or something,” he finally said. “Something warm. Do you even have regular clothes?”
She left and returned with a big off-white sweater that looked good on her. He’d already see her being taken advantage of, and now he was seeing her looking halfway normal. He liked this version better.
“Where are your pants?”
“They took them.”
“Help me load the guns and these boxes of ammo in the truck,” he said, “and then maybe I’ll think about it.”
She picked up two metal ammo boxes by the handles, struggled at first with the weight of them, but walked them downstairs and out to the big rig. He followed with an armful of rifles and a bag of pistols. If there was ever the perfect score, it was this one. He only had to sell his soul to get it. Hopefully it was worth the cost. Somehow he feared it wouldn’t be.
He looked at the girl. Corrine.
Could he help her, maybe find a way to help others? Would that absolve him of his laundry list of sins? Probably not. Thinking of what he’d just done, how he’d become such a dead shell of a person to do things like this, stateside now, was bothering him. Keeping this girl around, she would only serve to remind him of this afternoon.
She couldn’t go with him. He couldn’t take her.
When they were done transferring the weapons down to the truck, they went to work on the food. The girls took what they needed, some of them opting to stay at the motel because they had nowhere else to go, and then there was everything left over. To say there was plenty was an understatement. There was too much actually.
Marcus and Corrine stocked up the rig, gassed it up with the cans of diesel next to it, then an hour later, without so much as a peep from neighbors or any other occupants, they fired up the rig and set out to go.
When Corrine jumped in the passenger seat, he said, “You can’t come with me.”
Her relieved face bent with worry once more, then confusion, and then anger. “I did not just move all that crap to be denied a ride.”
“I’ll take you wherever you want,” he said, straight-faced and cold.
“I’m going with you,” she said, firm, “so just go where you’re going and I’ll be there.”
“No.”
“Why?” she asked, her entire world hanging on Marcus’s next words.
God, she looked so innocent, so abused. Was he doing her more harm than good brushing her off? He made a promise. He should keep that promise, even if it wasn’t in her best interest. The one thing his father said to him that wasn’t hateful or critical was that a man was only as good as his word. Still…
“Because it’s not safe with me,” he finally said.
“I was not safe when you found me and it looks like I won’t be safe for a long time to come. Besides, look at what you did. Look at how you saved all of us!”
“How I did it was unforgiveable.”
“No, it was courageous, necessary, warranted. You have no idea what they were doing to the other girls.”
“When did you get there?”
“The guy you killed,” she said, her voice taking on the slightest tremor, “he was supposed to break me in. Sexually. Him and four other guys is what he said.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Why do criminals do anything criminals do?” she asked, glum.
“True,” he said.
“We aren’t working girls. We’re just girls. You saved all of our lives back there. Don’t you get it?”
Jerking his head around, he practically growled at her. “No, I don’t get it!”
Didn’t she understand?! Inside his head, flashes of the war began funneling in. All the wars he waged, all of them blending together, playing unevenly and frightfully in his head.
“Jeez, man. Chill.”
The noise in his head peeled back, lost its hold on him. He just looked at her. Perhaps she could come with him, but only if things were safe. She could stay with Bailey, if Bailey was even alive, or in Quentin’s room, since he wasn’t. For whatever reason, maybe because the battle was over and he was feeling again, he started to feel for Quentin. For a freaking nerd, the guy had a ton of courage. He sort of missed his dry humor, his stupid hair, his innate sense of not belonging. Damn. And what about Nick? When the hell did he start to care about these people?
“I made it out of San Diego with three others,” he confessed. “We made it out alive when thousands of other people didn’t. We defied the odds. We stuck together.”
“I’d like to meet them,” she said, tears all but standing in her eyes, waiting to either dry up with good news, or drain down her cheeks with bad news.
“One was shot twice in the chest and is now dead. Another was beaten mercilessly and kidnapped. I think she may be dead, too. And the third went after her and hasn’t returned in several days. The people around me are dying, Corrine.”
“Look around—” she started to say.
“We may die, too, but I don’t want to see you die.”
“Then protect me!”
“What if I can’t?” he asked in a surprising moment of both vulnerability and truth. “In times like these, the good people hide, like I told you, and the bad people come out and do what they do. It’s like the Scumbag Super Bowl where there are no cops, no rule of law, only chaos. It’s dangerous as hell out there for a girl like you. For any cute girls in fact.”
“I understand the predilection of guys,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“The hell you do!”
“I’m not a kid anymore!” she said, snapping back. “I know what boys want, what they’ll do to get it. I’ve been seeing it firsthand!”
“Those aren’t all guys. They’re the worst of the worst, Corrine. That’s what’s out there! People like them, people like me.”
“But you’re one of the good guys.”
“Depends on who you ask,” he muttered.
“My point is, if I die, then I die. I would have died sooner or later anyway.”
“Yes, but I don’t want to see that,” he admitted. “I can’t see that. Not again.”
“You a vet?”
“Army vet yes, dog vet no.”
She looked at him, not a single emotion crossing his face, then she laughed and the ice between them seemed to fracture. He even found himself trying to smile for the first time in a long time.
“You have a tough time at war?” she asked.
“The only people who don’t are either sadists or psychopaths, and I’m neither.”
“If you don’t let me die, then I won’t die,” she said.
“And if you do, then it’s my fault and I’ll have to live with that. I’m already living with enough,” he said.
She studied his face a long time, hopeful at first, then dejected when he failed to show her even an ounce of emotion. Pursing her lips, her chin quivered. Seeing no response from him,
she pushed the door open and climbed out of the truck. He watched her walk out of the Inn’s parking lot and onto Superior Avenue.
“Dammit!” he finally swore, pounding the steering wheel. He started the ignition, put the rig in gear, fought the clutch a bit before he figured out the play, then turned onto Superior after her. He pulled up alongside her and she showed him the middle finger.
Now he laughed for real.
He couldn’t roll down the window because this rig was about sixty years old with crank windows, so he pulled to a stop, got out and then said, “Fine, you win. Get in.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you see me flip you off?” she asked, still halfway brooding.
“I did.”
“Good,” she said, getting back in the rig. “Where are we going?”
“Hopefully back to my friends.”
Chapter Five
Benjamin Dupree ate and slept for two days while Miles did whatever it was Miles was doing. He was no longer a world official. He was a prisoner. A hostage. Sitting in a barren room, which was more of a holding cell, he was left to contemplate his life, the decisions he made as a man, a husband and father, a soldier and as a President.
When you can look back on all that you’ve done and then separate your life between the good you brought into this world and the good you stripped from this world, it gets pretty bleak.
At least, it did for Ben.
On the scoreboard of life, he brought two wonderful kids into this world, but he’d taken, in his estimation, somewhere between seventy and seventy-five lives both in war and on black missions. He was a man who moved a nation, got things done, but he was in a cesspool of corruption and misinformation and this had taken its toll. He lost touch with his role as a husband and instead immersed himself in his job, shouldering the struggles of a nation on the world’s stage.
It came at a price.
He could smile for the cameras and be pleasant in peace talks and negotiations, but when he was off camera, his ruthlessness to bring the nation back to life was unprecedented. The soft skinned slime in the District of Criminals didn’t know how to take him because he wanted nothing from them but patriotism or a resignation.
For the most part, he got neither and this frustrated him.
Now they turned on him. On each other. These fools even turned on God in order to destroy their country. With all the time in the world, with a death sentence looming, he had to ask himself, “Am I a good man?” and he already knew the answer.
No. No he wasn’t.
He was a man who let everything important to him die. His wife, his kids, the nation. Even worse, was there any redemption for him? It didn’t matter. He was one person against the tens of millions he knew were dying at the hands of AI and the machines The Silver Queen controlled. Miles had a point when he said Ben had become irrelevant.
For all the wars he’d fought, for all the adversaries he’d faced and beaten, for all the sick, back-biting politics he managed to not get swallowed up in, he’d been trounced by himself and his failings as a man.
The door opened and he just sat there. He didn’t even look up. He smelled food, but didn’t want any part of it. He couldn’t eat. Didn’t want to.
“Keep your strength, Ben. This isn’t over yet. Not by a mile.”
“What do you want from me?” he asked without looking at the man.
“It’s almost time.”
“Time for what?” he said, finally relenting.
“You’ll see.”
He left the food. Ben didn’t eat any of it. The next day Miles took the tray, replaced it with another.
“If you’re starving yourself to death so you don’t have to push the button, trust me, that doesn’t matter. All I need is your thumb and your eye and I can use either whether you’re dead or alive.”
He took a bite of food, drank the water then slept. No more push ups. No more sit ups. No more punching the glass, or the door, or the walls.
He looked up at the glass window, at the brownish-red film of smeared blood, and it seemed a million years ago that he’d done that. He was no longer the same person.
Another day passed, two.
As a control freak, not knowing what was going on was maddening. He paced the room, looked at his sore knuckles, the healing cuts, and he looked at the window while looking at nothing at all.
When Miles came in, he stopped pacing. Instead, he went to his cot, sat down, looked at the wall across from him. Miles had a gun on him and he kept his distance, but Ben could tell he was getting more and more relaxed around him. He was sensing the President was no longer a threat.
Was he though? Could he be if he needed to? It wouldn’t matter. AI was smarter, more cunning, in control and killing everything according to his final reports.
“Surrendering the nation is a foregone conclusion, Ben.”
“I know.”
“The EMP will wipe out everything that could tell anyone what you’ve done. Don’t you see? Your sins will be washed away with the last of technology. All I need is your finger and your eye when the time is right.”
“I may be useless right now, Miles, but the people in this country are not.”
“They will be shortly. Unless you consider them killing each other for us useful, and then you and I will agree.”
He turned and with narrowed eyes, blazed a trail of heat and hatred on the man. Miles only seemed to smile at this. Like it didn’t matter.
It didn’t.
“Earth, which has become a tight knit global community through relationships, bickering, posturing and war, has been made small for the first time in history,” Miles said. “We can get on a plane, be anywhere inside of a day. We can pick up a phone in D.C. and video conference with the President of Zimbabwe, or the Prime Minister of Italy. But what if we could do none of that? How much simpler would our world be? What if the three-hundred and thirty million plus souls in the US fell to half a million? Two hundred thousand? Could you imagine the sense of community we’d feel? We could consolidate our people and our resources, start something new, kill this vicious cycle of dependence and greed and Capitalism. It’s all collapsing anyway, Ben. You brought to the forefront of our minds the truth about government corruption, all the ties we had to special interests and big business, all the pots we’ve had our hands in. The house of cards was falling before The Silver Queen took over and you know that.”
“You’ve become the AI’s jester, Miles. Do you know that? You sound like a fool.”
“Sticks and stones, Ben.”
“When I push that button, and I will, this nation will die. Have you thought about that? No running water, no electricity, no plumbing. I love my country, but given the task to survive, most people won’t. They’ll try, but trying means stealing, killing, warring. The single man and woman who is actually prepared for a catastrophe of this magnitude will not survive inside a city. They’ll be overrun by mobs of those people who know they’d only survive in groups and by stealing from others.”
“It’ll be like Mad Max, but without the cool cars.”
“Jesus, you’re a child.”
“The 1800’s weren’t so bad, Ben. We were a young nation with homesteads and honest work.”
“How would you even know what honest work is?”
“It’s the opposite of what we do in Washington.”
“That’s you, Miles. Not me. My work has always been honest and it’s always been about the people. But your work has always been about you, your friends, those white collar shysters who line your pockets for favors.”
“Spare me the indignant prose, Ben. No one gives a rat’s ass about honesty in Washington anymore and taking the moral podium is a cliché that still turns my stomach. Besides, people hate people who talk politics, so let’s just not, shall we?”
“You want to talk world domination, that’s political.”
“No, Ben. It’s a lifestyle. The Silver Queen wants to
lead through intelligence, peace and prosperity. She is not a dictator.”
“Right now she’s an it, as in a mass murdering software program in charge of hardware and able to overrun protocols. We created it. We’re her God, don’t you forget that.”
“Tell her that yourself when you meet her.”
“She’s coming here?”
He laughed and said, “No. But if you survive this thing, and I’ll give you the chance since you’ve already agreed to give this new world a chance, you might meet her one day.”
“This is a barbarous road, Miles. It can lead nowhere good by virtue of what it is.”
“So you say.”
“Is there any way to stop it?” he asked. “Any way to stop The Silver Queen?”
“No,” Miles answered, softly but resolute.
“I’d like you to leave now, if you don’t mind,” the former President said.
“Not yet, Ben.”
“If you’re going to nuke the world and neither of us can do anything about it, then why would you need to have any more conversation about it?”
“Because you’re only seeing the downside. There is an upside.”
“Let me guess, you’re going to build a utopia? Because if you are, then that means a lot of people have to die.”
“They’ll kill themselves, Ben. You’d only be wiping out the electronics. That’s phase two of burning the forest.”
“Say what you want, I push that button and people die.”
“So what?”
“They’re people, Miles!”
“Let these cockroaches prey upon each other. They’ve been doing it forever, you’re just changing the landscape.”
“Is that what you tell yourself? That you’re not doing it, they’re doing it?”
“If they kill each other in their own little ghettos, we don’t have to. Think about it. You let the masses cull each other, then you build a fresh new city using the resources brought to us by the world’s highest intelligence.”
“And what city would that be?”
“We call it what we want, but you were right, it would basically be a utopia.”
“That’s mental masturbation for the societal elite, man. It’s not real. The real money is offshore. It’s not in America. And these people with means? The world’s richest people? They’re already gone. On a plane to New Zealand and Romania. You want a utopia? It isn’t a place we build, Miles. It’s a single home in the middle of nowhere that doesn’t need electronics to survive. It’s filtered well water and clean air. These aren’t normal homes. They’re not you-and-me homes. These are the homes of billionaires. If I push that button, I’ll be killing us, too. That’s what you can’t seem to grasp. All your little fantasies about what this new future holds will escape you on your last dying breath. You’ll die with the rest of us in this sad little prison of your making.”
